The Childcare Academy Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff greet children and their parents with smiles and eagerness as they arrive at the nursery. They take the time to speak with parents about children's care and development needs. Staff offer nurturing hugs and create strong attachments with children. Children demonstrate they are happy and feel safe and secure. Staff promote children's positive behaviour well. They demonstrate to younger children the need to share toys, and older children are reminded of the nursery rules. Staff carefully select their words as they encourage children to take turns and be patient. This results in children playing well together, reminding their friends that 'sharing is caring'. Staff place great emphasis on supporting children's emotional well-being. For example, they use a 'feeling tree' and an 'emotion board'. This helps to support children to express their feelings and emotions.

Staff provide learning opportunities to children that cover all areas of learning. They capture children's curiosity and extend their concentration. Children enjoy feeling pine cones and crunching leaves in their hands, while others scoop out the middle of a pumpkin and show great delight as they search for seeds. Staff have high expectations for every child. This ensures that all children make good progress in their learning.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• The management team works well together and has a clear vision. It shares this with the staff and together they provide a high-quality service to children and families. The manager accurately identifies the strengths and the progress that they have made since opening the nursery. She works with other professionals, such as the local authority quality officer, and has a detailed action plan in place that will support future developments and improvements.
• Staff feel the manager is approachable and takes into consideration their emotional needs and continued professional development. Supervision meetings are regularly carried out and staff training needs are identified. As a result, staff have a great understanding of how children learn and develop and carry out their roles and responsibilities well.
• The management team and staff have devised a well-sequenced curriculum that supports all the children that attend. This includes children who speak English as an additional language and children who have enhanced play plans in place. Staff know children well and use information from observations to identify gaps in their learning and development. Children benefit from meaningful and focused learning experiences that staff plan to help prepare them for the next stage in their learning.
• Staff support children's communication and language development well. They sing songs and rhymes that children eagerly join in with. Staff speak clearly to children as they read stories and skilfully ask them questions, giving them time to respond. Yet, on occasions, some staff do not ensure that they are consistent in their approach when capturing children's attention. This results in some children not being aware that they are being spoken to and prevents them from hearing or understanding the instructions given. This does not fully support children to learn to listen attentively and respond effectively.
• Children show great determination and are eager to do things for themselves. For instance, they take off their wellington boots and place their coats on their allocated peg. However, some staff are too quick to carry out tasks for children, such as wiping their noses, serving them food and pouring them drinks. This prevents children from further developing and building on their self-care and independence skills.
• Staff develop good relationships with parents. They communicate well with parents and continually hold discussions about children's development and how they can further support this at home. Furthermore, staff welcome information from parents about any learning that takes place at home. This two-way communication supports children's continuity in learning. Parents state that their children have blossomed at the nursery and they are very impressed with the information that staff gather when their children start. This helps staff to support children's emotional needs and they settle quickly.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review the strategies that staff use when capturing children's attention and when giving instructions to further develop and support children's understanding and listening skills
• support staff to make better use of opportunities to allow children to further support and build on their independence and self-care skills.